Autumn Harvest - Greengages

In any new home your garden starts as something of a mystery.  I always think it is best to leave a garden for the first year and see how it works, where the sun goes, what grows well, what secrets it has to reveal. We moved on 26th September 2015 and celebrated our first year in Little Hadham with a bottle of organic cider at the village music festival.

One rather lovely surprise from the Ash Cottage garden has been the greengage trees.  There are 6 of them.  A little over kill I thought, never having tasted a greengage in my life.  However, over the last month they have gradually unburdened themselves of their fruit.  Little green goblets of sharp, golden, green nectar in firm skins of bright green.  They are delicious.  

They are delicious picked straight from the tree, they are delicious in jam, they are delicious in clafoutis, they are delicious stewed with yoghurt, over ice-cream or in crumbles, they are delicious in chutney they are delicious in jam, we will see if they are delicious in gin!

Greengage Clafoutis

They are a revelation that I can’t recommend enough.  Despite gorging ourselves on them, freezing them, preserving them in jam and chutneys and giving them away to friends and family, teachers and mums at the school gate, we still have more...

Next year I will save up the soft fruit punnets from the grocers, and the little foxes can earn pocket money picking them and batching them up into saleable quantities to dispose of at the garden gate.

5

Getting Ready for Halloween

I'm looking forward to some crafting with some of the local children to celebrate Halloween.  The materials for our crafts have arrived, and Bea the dog is looking like she's interested.

The crafts are all designed, a paper Jack O'lantern, a bat sweetie cone, a black cat badge, and I think we'll make some communal halloween bunting too.

It will be the first time we've used the shop for one of our craft events, so I've started a bit of clearing and tidying in there too, much to the Little Foxes annoyance, it's their play room at the moment.

0

New Foxes

I'm working on some new foxes for the Folksy store in time for Christmas.

With a fine wire armature, this sculpture stands unaided and can be posed.

Textiledermy or faux taxidermy - a felted fox head mounted on a wooden disc to hang on the wall. Wood sourced from the garden at Ash Cottage.

What do you think?

0